Dwight E. Foster
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Book IV, The Chairman, is the fourth book in a cycle of seven books entitled Shattered Covenants. Shattered Covenants narrates the formation, rise, decline, and fall of McKenzie Barber, a global management consulting firm.
The Chairman, Ernie Grey, after eighteen years as McKenzie Barber's CEO is beginning to reflect on succession. He is standing without opposition for his fourth six-year term as the Chairman of McKenzie Barber. The Chairman is narrated from Ernie Grey's point of view. He has been absolute monarch of McKenzie Barber. Instinctively, Ernie recognizes that the market for consulting services has changed, and that McKenzie Barber can no longer grow organically.
Ernie Grey made an early choice in Hamilton Burke III, not unlike the manner in which John McKenzie, the founder, had picked out Ernie early in his career. He has moved Burke overseas through the French and the UK practices and brought him back to the US as McKenzie Barber's first Partner in Charge of Strategic Planning. The old line Partners fail to recognize Burke's emergence as a serious Chairman successor. Burke is the ultimate swashbuckling successor, a bachelor, former decorated Green Beret with a French mistress who owns a steel mill and who has an eye for receptive ladies. He is bigger than life with a matching ego. Ernie Grey has commissioned Burke to serve as the change agent to structure the McKenzie Barber in the 1980's.
Book IV introduces Ernie Grey's initial flirtation with Toni Alter, a young woman junior in age to his own daughter. Ernie's wife, Millie, is carrying on an affair with Cornelius Vanderkelen, the powerful Chairman of International Petroleum Company (IPCO). The Vanderkelen fortune has been built on oil. Ernie is invited to join the IPCO Board while the Chairman, Cornelius Vanderkelen, is sleeping with his wife. Book IV, the Chairman, covers a three-month period during which Ernie Grey makes a decision on his successor.
Prior villains and knaves introduced in the earlier three books of Shattered Covenants reappear in Book IV. They include the villainous Clyde Nickerson, General Buzzsaw Pritchard, who joins McKenzie Barber to head FSO, McKenzie Barber's Washington based defense industry consulting practice. Joe Baxter, who is finally elected a Partner, Roger Dirks, the Chairman contender, who is removed from contention following his stabbing by a Spanish dancer, Frank Alvardi , Baxter's executive compensation mentor who resembles Joe DiMaggio, Walker Frederick, who merchandises his employee benefits consulting practice to McKenzie Barber and a host of other characters with fluid tongues, sharp elbows, and aggressive financial expectations.
The final lines of Book IV summarize The Chairman.
The McKenzie Barber Partners Meeting of 1978 marked the end of the old order. There was no going back!
Dwight Foster, the author of Shattered Covenants, is a native of
Minnesota who was transferred to New York City in 1980. He
retired as a consulting partner from an international public
accounting firm in January 1990 to form an executive search
firm.
Shattered Covenants is a first novel, which represents
an eight year project dealing with the passing of leadership in a
professional services firm. Shattered Covenants is Book
III of a series of free standing novels relating to the formation of
a major management consulting firm, its rise, zenith, decline, and
ultimate compliant merger with a principal competitor.
Shattered Covenants deals with the passing of CEOs (i.e.
kings) and their ultimate effect on the careers and lives of the
courtiers and rank and file professionals who follow the leadership
of the CEO.
The author has spent his business career in the consulting
industry and, for the past eleven years, has headed up a
well-recognized executive search firm. Dwight Foster has published
previously in management studies and magazine articles and is
quoted from time to time in the national press. His experience in
the practice of executive search and familiarity with organization
and business models over the past thirty years provided the
motivation to write a sweeping novel. The primary narrator of
Shattered Covenants, Joseph Baxter, Jr., is the son of a
labor martyr from Minnesota's Iron Range who rises to a Board
Room, world traveling executive compensation consultant.
Baxter is a modern day Candide who develops the cunning to
survive in a ruthlessly competitive business world.
Dwight Foster is a University of Minnesota Alumnus, the father
of two adult children, and is married to Dorothy Choitz Foster, a
well-known consultant to the cosmetics and fragrance industry.
The Fosters maintain an apartment in New York City and a
permanent home in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.
Ernie Grey completed his morning exercise routine promptly at
6:25 AM. He started his exercise program promptly at 6 AM
and had equipped a small gym on the lower floor of their
massive, three story, white Colonial home. The gym looked out
on the back lawn and the pond with the gazebo. There were
sliding glass doors providing Ernie a view of his property. The
property line was down the hill another hundred yards. Ernie
liked to exercise looking out at his property.
He started with forty push-ups and then performed seventy-five
sit-ups before running in place for five minutes. Ernie
completed the drill on his exercise cycle.
He finished at 6:25 on the dot, never 6:24 or 6:26 AM. On travel
mornings, Ernie held his exercise to the push-ups and sit-ups in
the morning, and he took a brisk walk in the evening before
retiring. His hair was beginning to gray, but Millie had
introduced him to coloring five years earlier and Ernie's hair
continued to appear jet black. At 57 years of age, Ernie Grey
prided himself on having the appearance of a man in his early
forties. He was vigorous, energetic, and had been running
McKenzie Barber for eighteen years. In three years, Ernie would
be sixty, but he felt like 35.
He showered in the bathroom off the gym and stepped out of the
shower in front of the full length mirror that Millie maintained in
each of the house's four bathrooms. He appeared flat bellied and
youthful. Ernie slipped into a terry cloth robe and jogged up the
back stairs to the master bedroom.
Surprisingly, Millie was up. She had her dressing gown on and
was finishing her make-up at the dressing table when Ernie
emerged from the hall.
"Hey, it's Saturday," Ernie greeted his wife. "What are you
doing up?"
"The same thing you are. We need to talk about a few things,
Ernie," Millie said while applying her make-up. "I know that
you're going into the office this morning. How are you getting
in?"
"George is picking me up," Ernie answered. George was his
driver.
"You've got George working on Saturdays too?"
"He's going to take Thursday and Friday off. I'll be in London.
This will be a soft day for George. All he has to do is take me in
and pick me up at 4 PM so I can get home and dressed for that
bash tonight."
"Cocktails at the Historical Society will start at six, Ernie. I
think you better have George pick you up by 3:30. I want you
dressed in black tie by 5:30. I promised Karen Thatcher I would
be there by ten of six. Wilbur will be there too. You're always
complaining about how much work Robson Allen is doing for
Wilbur's Bank. Here's your chance, Ernie, to spend some time
with Wilbur Thatcher."
"I'll commit to 3:30, Mille, but it may rush us a little. I would
love to spend ten minutes alone with Wilbur Thatcher and may
even extend it to fifteen minutes."
"I thought I would cook you breakfast this morning, Ernie,"
Millie said rising from the dressing table. Millie's hair was cut
short and her figure remained trim under the chiffon dressing
gown. With her shapely legs, Millie could also pass for a
woman in her early forties.
"What an offer!" Ernie said pulling on his underwear.
"Let's have an order, Mac," Millie commanded.
"One egg scrambled, toast, a small orange juice, and coffee,"
Ernie responded.
"Done! Mac!" Millie said and she kissed Ernie on the cheek
while on the way out of the room. "I'll see you at breakfast."
There was a nook off the kitchen. The house had gone up in the
1920's and had two owners before the Greys had moved in
during mid-July of 1954. Kathleen had been two, and it was in
the year before Prescott had been born. The house had been way
over their heads financially. "We're betting the store, Ernie,"
Millie had said at the time. But it had worked out nicely. Ernie
became a Partner, then the Administrative Partner, and finally
Senior Partner of the firm. They had borrowed heavily from
Millie's trust, and what they could from Ernie's trust. There
really hadn't been a lot of savings at the time. Over time they
returned the money to the trusts, but Ernie acknowledged that
they never would have been able to buy the house without
Millie's money.
They had been in the house at Morning Heights since 1954 and
24 years later, the mortgage was nearly liquidated, and the
property had been assessed at $4.5 million dollars up from
$100,000 in 1954. Morning Heights creaked a little and seemed
to require a lot of annual maintenance, but Millie kept the house
in mint condition. Millie knew every tradesman by first name,
knew their children, and kept a schedule for continuous
maintenance in a ring binder near the kitchen telephone. She
would hold up the ring binder periodically and say; 'If anything
should happen to me, everything about keeping up this house is
in here. Come here, I'll take you through it. Think of it Ernie,
you could turn the whole home management process over to an
administrative person.'" Ernie always marveled at Millie's sense
of organization and documentation. He acknowledged to
himself that if Millie had gone onto business school, and joined
McKenzie Barber, she could well be a Partner. This was one
more female Partner than he had on this particular morning.
